In the bowling industry, jamming of pinspotting, or pin spotting, machines constitute a major economic cost to the industry. In addition to the cost for providing personnel to reset the machine, there is a loss of income to the operator when the machine is down.
One particular pinspotting machine in wide use was manufactured and distributed by American Machine Foundry under a type designation of 82-70. There are literally thousands of these machines operating on a daily basis throughout the country. The machine its operations and features are disclosed in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 3,526,401 entitled Pin "Distributing Apparatus with Cantilever Supported Extendable Belt Conveyor" and granted to John Zuercher on Sep. 1, 1970.
While this particular pinspotting machine is generally reliable, the jams do occur on a relatively regular basis. As the pins are fed toward the pin storage magazine assembly by the distributor mechanism there is a tendency for the head pin (#1 pin) to bounce and occasionally a pin will bounce out of position and jam as the pin moves toward the #1 pin storage pocket in the pin storage magazine or shuttle. Naturally when this occurs, the machine stops and it is necessary to unjam the machine and reset the mechanism. Occasionally the jamming will result in breaking parts of the pinspotting machine, thereby necessitating costly and time consuming repairs while the lane is out of service.
One purpose of this invention is to provide an improved mechanism which will reduce the frequency of jamming of the type of pinspotting machine referred to above.